Mind of Brian 7: In My Room

There is something frightfully, dangerously beautiful about this song.
While Brian's work from the beginning through 1967 is rife with absolute
masterpieces, there are many angles from which this song can be seen as
representative of the whole, autobiographical in the extreme, and exemplary
of the essence talentwise. A keyboard/bass player's song, it lives in a
difficult key, with interesting voicings and passing chords/notes, a total
fusion of form and content, words and melody and harmony completely united.
The danger comes in the fact that this song forms an appealing, comforting,
and unspeakably beautiful environment in which one can become lost...

Intro

As we've seen with Fun Fun Fun for example, Brian often siezes on a cliche
as an intro, as though offering himself, the band, and the listener a
reference point in known geography before heading out into uncharted
territory. Here we get our old friend, I vi ii V (this goes back to doowop,
it's the second most popular variant on the standard waltz-tempo pop
ballad), with surf guitar arpeggios and that lovely,
prefiguring-Pet-Sounds-and-Smile harp flourish at the end:

B G#m C#m F#

The first noise you hear is "ting" like a small bell or gong being struck.
And though we'll hear each of these chords again, some in close proximity to
one another, just as with Fun Fun Fun the intro is the only clear statement
of the cliche. From now on it'll be pure Brian at his absolute best.
Listening to the demo version on the boxed set, this part is noticeably
absent, as if it were added later, even in the studio.

Notice the implications of the choices made so far: we are in a 12/8 waltz
sort of thing, which should be about love, and somewhat sad, viewed within
the standard pop vocabulary. Before we finish, the bass sneaks in the same
major V-I walkup that occupies a similar position in Surfer Girl, just
between the intro and the first word:

F# G# A#

First Verse

Having established the key as B and doing that little walkup, it's no
surprise that the substance matter begins on the major root chord:

B B B B B Amaj7 B G#m
There's a world where I can go and tell my secrets too

We have the "ting" again here, it is interspersed through out... The big
surprise is how long we stay on B. The intro and the standard form would
indicate that measures 2-4 of this line replicate the pattern and continue
with G#m, C#m or E, then F#. That they don't is in itself innovative; that
they stay on the root chord is absolutely perfect, because the song is about
staying in one place, safety, and security. While a solo voice sings the
first few words, a beautiful Beach Boys stack builds slowly upward over the
simple major harmonies on B to get jazzier and more Four-Freshmany on the
"tell my secrets" lyric.

Of further interest is how the second four measures are structured,
especially when compared with the cliche pattern. Rather then B G#m C#m/E
F# we get a break of key with that Amaj7 chord,a VIImaj7 that is not in the
standard diatonic chord palette. That pull chord, a frequent device of for
example John Lennon, is very modal and Eastern in some senses, it is
something that rotates around the root of B without getting very far from
it, and provides less a resolution of tension (what we expect from V-I or
F#-B in this case) than a simple step sideways, which is exactly what we get
here. That moment of resolution is saved for later.

The Hook

C#m A F# F# B Amaj7 B B
In my room in my room (in my room)

For those of you following at home, note that the first two words here are a
"pickup" and harmonize with the passing G#m that took us out of the verse.
The passing G#m chord is also absent from the demo and a later elaboration.
Now I know you can make an argument that this set of measures is of a piece
with the verse itself, but I've decided to split it off a little just to
talk about it separately from the verse. For one thing, some very
interesting things happen here vocally. Through the verse line, the stack
stays right with the lead once it joins in, singing exactly the same words
and timings albeit on different notes. The drums enter on the word "room"
and stay in throughout, accompanied by the ting now and then for emphasis.

Here, though, the lead holds a single C# note on the word "room" when it
first occurs, while the harmonies move with the chords and change notes to
follow the progression to A major and F# major. This moment, where Brian's
lead holds that one note while the others move, is incredibly beautiful, and
the chord pattern is absolutely perfect; almost everyone who ever hears this
song even once remembers exactly this part. The same A chord (actually a
close variant) that appeared in the verse is used again here in a completely
different context to completely different effect (reminiscent of a similar
use of Bm in the transition out of the obbligado modulation in God Only
Knows...). In the verse, A gave us a modal step away from home, with a
strong implication we weren't very far away and would be back in a jiffy.
Here it forms a minimodulating transition between one familiar, in-key spot
(C#m, the ii chord and very inside) and another (F#, the V, setting up a
dominant cadence and a true feeling of returning home), giving us a nested
chromatic ascent, to wit:

G# A A#

in the backing vocals and chords, using the fifth of C#m, the root of A, and
the third of F#. If one were to look up Brian Wilson of Earth, MilkyWay in
some species-neutral Intergalactic Musical Dictionary, one would hear this
little moment. Clever, gorgeous, representative, appropriate: genius time.

The latter part of the hook is of interest too. It is harmonically quite
similar in form to the latter part of the verse, except it has a completely
different melody, and the backing vocals slip into an echoing/repetend role,
continuing the break they made from the lead earlier in this section. The
only difference between these four measures and the last four in the verse
section is that last chord, B here rather than G#m (those of course share
two common tones anyway). And for good reason: the G#m was a passing chord
taking us somewhere new, setting up something even more interesting, whereas
here the B fills out an eight-measure section and gives the singers (and the
listener!) a breather before the next verse comes in.

Musically we have no new material here, we are continuing the story line,
though some variation comes from the percussion side. This is a good time
therefore to discuss the lyrics... we have a person who has secrets to tell,
and has worries and fears and a need to lock them out. The "conflict" in
this tale, then, is between the speaker and his own inner demons; no
external players such as lovers, rivals, ex-lovers, parents, or loud
braggarts are involved here. The song is about and by person who creates a
world of his own that insulates him from all of the within *and* without.

The little D#m passing chord, occurring at the same point as our previous
G#m and just as absent from the demo version, at once evokes the turnaround
back to the verse yet takes us somewhere new. The organ line that
accompanies it, three simple notes (B-A#-G#), suggests the words "in my
room" without stating them, using the same timing as the hook words in the
chorus. Where we end up is the bridge, very interesting in itself and
wondrous in how it relates to the overall song and subject matter...

This first line is sung solo, a relief in a way from the stack we've been
hearing for awhile, with that middle part "testifying" feeling carried from
gospel to Spector to Brian. What has been a relatively smooth harmonic
rhythm throughout (smooth, measure by measure chord changes with the
expected exception of passing chords in transitions) is violated here by
those tossing and turning G#m and F# chords in the fifth measure, exactly
perfect for suggesting what it's like to lie awake, then coming to rest back
home at the B root chord for the restful feeling of prayer. As in God Only
Knows Brian exceedingly well makes the words and music convey the same
message, each in their own language.

I treated these two lines separately simply because in this fairly in-key,
non-modulating middle part, typical at least in is chord choices of the
Spectoresque girl group era material that so influenced Brian, there is just
so much happening. The toss-turn-settle motion of the first half is
transcended in this line and yields to a smoother settling in, startin with
the same chords as the first line but moving to a dominant cadence that will
introduce the last verse.

The harmonies come back in here, and very interestingly enough while the
chords here are the same for the first four measures, the melodic emphasis
differs from the first line. Here the primary melody seems to be working
off the fifth note, starting on D#, whereas in the first line the solo vocal
is clearly on the root, G#, continuing off the little organ line that
introduced all of this. And at the end of this part, the neat and very
Brianesque trick of anticipating a chord with the melody and waiting for the
harmony to catch up is done wonderfully: the voice holds the F# note on the
syllable "day" across the E and F# chords, creating movement from stillness
as the perceived interval/voicing shifts from ninth to root.

There is no new music here until the fadeout, instead the focus is on
closing the story. Whereas the previous material talked about sort of
everyday practice, this summary locks into the immediate present and starts
with the word "now." Our speaker is alone and in the dark, but has no fear
because he is in the one place where he can cope with what Matthew Arnold
describes in Dover Beach: "In the sea of life enisled, we mortal millions
live alone." The fadeout has one of the most beautiful Brian peak endnotes,
that high B on the word "room;" not among is most challenging or
exhilarating, but beautiful and well chosen. Whereas on pieces such as
Surfer Girl or Warmth of the Sun we see modulations at the end, this song is
precisely about steadiness, modulating and changing things would be dead wrong.

Something to Say at the End

One can easily dwell on the beauty of this piece, and just as easily dismiss
it as an ode to cocooning or an antisocial, dysfunctional view of the world.
I prefer to think of it as embodying a fundamental truth: that in spite of
our social nature, in spite of our connectedness and need for intimacy and
functioning in groups and so forth, in the end we face our Maker alone,
solely responsible for our own lives and choices and nothing else. As Rumi
put it, tie two birds together and they cannot fly, even though they have
four wings.

The obvious cognate song on the Beatle side is There's A Place, of which
I've recorded a slow surfesque cover version to make the case for the
overlap. But in the Lennon song, there is a lover to think of; in this
song, Brian does not refer to any other human being at all other than
himself: no lovers, rivals, friends, nobody.

One can also detect here some hints of sadder days to come. This song
appears on the Surfer Girl album, incredibly early, by a young and
successful Brian riding the surf craze to instant wealth and fame. Yet when
he speaks from the heart it is of worries and fears, crying and sighing,
darkness and aloneness. It is surprising if you think of the writer's age
and overall socioeconomic position, sort of incongruous the way the lyrics
to Help! come out at the height of Beatlemania.

It's easy, in other words, to make connections between the feelings stated
here, and others more overtly mentioned in Pet Sounds (most specifically in
I Just Wasn't Made for These Times and Hang On To Your Ego/ I Know There's
An Answer). The forces of darkness and worry, the pressure to please others
and be commercial, the feeling that one is misunderstood and just doesn't
belong... it happens here first. It's clearly there to read in the Pet
Sounds lyrics as well, and thus it's no surprise, well, that Smile never
ships, we don't see the Pet Sounds box set, you all know what I'm referring
to. But we do have this song, the truth and beauty therein, and within each
of us a room of sorts like the one Brian describes... a place where we can
go when we feel low and blue, where the worry and fear can't get in. For
me, and for many of you I'm sure, this song is playing when I go to that
place, at least some of the time.

(Note to guitarists: to play this, either take it down a step to A or capo 2
and play the chords listed here in A position. The first approach is easier
to sing, the second more faithful to, and in tune with, the record...)